Lookatvietnam – They’re big in stature and demand, but Quach Van Dich is not giving up his anchors to just anyone after news that they may be around 700 years old.

Big job: Foreign and Vietnamese experts study one of the two anchors preserved at Dich’s home.

The anchor’s two hooks are attached to the main body with wooden pins, and wrapped tightly with thick rope, which has been immersed underwater so long it has become rock hard. Another piece of rope is attached to the top of the device.

“At first, I thought the rope was made of horse tail,” says Dich, “but when I tried to burn it, there was ash, but no smell of burning. I suppose it was made from a special kind of tree bark that has survived hundreds of years without rotting.”

Proudly displayed at the front of his restaurant, the anchor drew a lot of attention. Then a few months later, another fisherman arrived at Dich’s house with another giant anchor in tow.

“I thought I should buy the second one, so I could display them as a pair, like brothers,” Dich says. The second one is shorter, and it has only one hook, which is more than 1m long.

Mystery deepens

The businessman’s anchors got a lot of tongue’s wagging in the area. The mystery came to a head when one day, a group of visitors from Beijing arrived at his restaurant.

“They went straight to the anchor, looked it over, lit a piece of the rope, and had a lengthy conversation together. Finally, they asked me to sell them the anchors.” According to Dich, the visitor’s interpreter told him the two anchors were valuable, and they might belong to the ships of the Tran dynasty back in the 13th century.

“They asked me to sell them the anchors for US$30,000.” But Dich refused, as he began to think about the historical value the anchors might have for his own country, especially as the capital gears up to celebrate its 1,000th anniversary.

“These anchors are antiques, and I don’t know for sure whether they belong to Vietnamese or Chinese ships. Maybe, these anchors belonged to war ships sunk in the Bach Dang River during the 13th century, when the Mongolian Yuan invaders attacked our country.”

The Chinese group didn’t give up easily. Dich says they returned several times, the last time was in 2002 when they gave him a final offer of $150,000 for the pair. Dich continued to resist.

Another threat came from closer to home, when a Vietnamese automobile dealer came to Dich’s house when he was away on business. “The dealer almost succeeded in convincing my wife to sell the anchors, saying it would be good money for our family and make our home more airy. But, she was too afraid to make the deal alone, so the anchors are still here,” Dich says with a smile.

Stepping stones

Getting to the bottom of the riddle was not a straightforward business, says Dich.

The restaurateur’s first port of call was the Vietnamese History Museum, where Dich asked museum director Pham Quoc Quan for some advice about the anchors. Quan sent an expert to Dich’s house, who then introduced Dich to the Viet Nam History Academy. But the staff at the academy could not help him, so they passed him onto the Institute of Anthropology.

“I got so tired with these officials, sometimes I just felt like giving up and selling the anchors to the Chinese. But I changed my mind as soon as I met historian Duong Trung Quoc.”

Quoc and archaeologist Dr Vu The Long from the Viet Nam Archaeology Academy visited Dich’s house and took photos of the anchors, which they sent to researchers in Japan.

According to the Japanese researchers, the fact that the anchors are made of wood and rope is a big clue to their age because modern anchors are usually metal.

Historian Duong Trung Quoc agrees: “The experts from Japan and I all think the anchors could belong to the 14th or 15th centuries. We also agree that the rope wrapped around the main body of the anchor is made from a kind of areca palm, which is not a local tree.”

The find couldn’t have come at a better time, says Long. “For the past ten years, we’ve been thinking of setting up a marine-archaeology centre and a navigation museum. The discovery of the anchors was a good chance for us. With the help of foreign archaeologists, we might be able to find the remaining wreckage of the warships.”

Long’s research confirmed Dich’s suspicions about the anchors’ origins. “The anchors might belong to the Yuan’s warship sunken during the Bach Dang Battle. That same century, the Yuan army also crossed the sea three times to attack Japan, but their ships were sunk by hurricanes. Perhaps Japanese researchers have studied about such ships.”

The research should be carried out by Vietnamese experts with help from foreign researchers, Long says.

Summoning the troops

After that, a group of Japanese and American researchers specialised in old ships came to help. The six-man team included two professors from the Institute of Nautical Archaeology (INA), two from Flinder University, and two postgraduate students.

Along with Long and Dich, the team visited the famous site of the Bach Dang Battle, called Bai Coc (Ground of Stakes), so called because the Vietnamese Tran army used lim (iron wood) stakes to trap the invading Yuan warships. The group also stopped off at Bach Dang Museum in the north-eastern province of Quang Ninh.

“We want to help Vietnamese scientists develop their research methods, and encourage sponsorship to establish a fund to help this study,” says one of the researchers, Randall Sasaki.

Long says chairman of the Institute of Nautical Archaeology (INA), Professor James Delgado, agreed that identifying the origin of the anchors was only part of the picture.

“The bulk of the project will be to pull out the wrecks of the Yuan warships from the area of river where the battle of Bach Dang took place.”

Long says they have also sent samples of wood and rope from the anchors to the Viet Nam Archaeology Academy to ask for their help in identifying the origins.

“At present, we still don’t have any concrete answers, but we can say that the wood does not belong to trees from northern China. The rope is made from a kind of areca or coconut tree.”

Long says the anchors are very valuable, because they are so big and were found in the river that runs through Ha Noi.

“This proves that the city has been a busy trading centre for many centuries,” Long says.

Both archaeologist Vu The Long and historian Duong Trung Quoc say they appreciate Dich’s decision not to sell the anchors to foreigners. “Ha Noi Museum is showing a lot of interest in them,” Long says.

In the meantime, Dich says he wants to sell the anchors to a Vietnamese museum and donate a large amount of the money to charitable causes.

“I am waiting to find out if my anchors are from Chinese or Vietnamese ships, transport ships or warships. I want to preserve them in a museum, because if I sell them to foreigners, I think they will be lost to our nation forever.”

(Source: Viet Nam News)